1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an automated agent system and method and more particularly to a system and method, which expedites resolution of inquiries in an automated agent.
2. Description of the Related Art
A call center provides rapid resolution of a caller's inquiry. In a traditional call center manned by human agents, both the caller and the agent tend to barge in on each other during the course of a normal conversation; this may serve to speed up the process of problem resolution.
For example, the following exchange illustrates a call made to a call center. The caller had just installed a software package on his computer following the agent's instructions and inquired, “So I need to start the . . . ”, but before the caller could finish the sentence, the agent barged in with the answer, “Yeah, you need to take out the CD first and then restart . . . ” and so on, since the agent could guess what the caller was going to say and did not want to wait for the caller to finish saying the full sentence.
This type of barge-in by the agent and the caller helps to expedite the process of problem resolution in a traditional call center manned by human agents.
In an automated call center, barge-in by a caller is often permitted to speed up the process of problem resolution. For example, an experienced caller familiar with the call center functions may decide to bypass the initial greetings playback by barging-in in the middle of the greetings with an inquiry. However, the technology for a barge-in function by an automated agent does not currently exist.